shows that have been destroyed (1 Viewer)

[oldtvshowbuff]

Samson and Goliath, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series on NBC Saturday mornings in 1967-68 had 26 12-minute episodes, but only 20 exist today. Would anybody want to elaborate on this series?

 

[Jack P]

A previously lost episode of "Password" aired earlier this afternoon on Buzzr! This was the December 25, 1966 program that marked the brief weekly primetime revival of the series which had ended in September 1965 (while the daytime run continued). For the first new night show, Lee Remick and Peter Lawford were the guests and instead of regular contestants they invited their friends to be their partners in the games. So we also saw Pierre Salinger, Otto Preminger, Phyllis Newman, Audrey Meadows, Stephen Sondheim and Remick's mother Pat Packard playing the game.

The color tape version of this episode was edited down for the syndicated rerun package of Password along with the other color night shows of 1967 and the color daytime shows of 1966-67. But this episode (along with some daytime shows that were part of the package) has gone missing and consequently was never seen again on GSN or BUZZR.

Then it turned out a B/W kinescope of this episode was part of the Library of Congress holdings of kinescopes that Mark Goodson Productions had donated to them and this led to Buzzr airing the LOC kinescope copy this afternoon and they even left in the original ads!

With this episode now "found" there are only by my count about eight or nine missing CBS night Passwords from the combined 1962-65, 1967 runs out of some 200 shows.

 

[MatthewA]

How many shows the Internet declared "lost" 20 years ago have been found since then?

 

[Mark Y]

Samson and Goliath, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series on NBC Saturday mornings in 1967-68 had 26 12-minute episodes, but only 20 exist today. Would anybody want to elaborate on this series?

I have read stuff like that before. I unfortunately am not overly familiar with the show, but I do know that both it and "Space Kidettes" are kind of intertwined with each other as Hanna-Barbera shows sponsored by General Mills in the 1960s, which ended up being part of the DFS library alongside the Jay Ward and Total TV stuff.

I wasn't there, but I am told that back in the 1960s, the two series aired on network TV separately, but Space Kidettes had Go Go Gophers and The Hunter as supporting segments, while Young Samson (official series title) had Fractured Fairy Tales. Somewhere buried in my archives I have a 16mm print of this version of Young Samson, and I have a 1980s VHS recording of a Space Kidettes (which I taped myself) which has the Total TV cartoons in it (they also have their own brief credit added after the end of the show) and has short skits with the Space Kidettes in between the segments. The main Space Kidettes cartoon is split into two parts with the TTV stuff in the middle IIRC.

Meanwhile, USA Cartoon Express ran a different version of the shows, which combined Space Kidettes and Young Samson into one half-hour. This is the version of the show which later ran on Boomerang and was released by Warner Archive.

I've read that the episodes were actually edited down later, but I think it's more likely that they ran in this other format combined with cartoons from another studio, and that's why they had to be reformatted later (different segments under different ownership).

But if that's not correct, I sure would like to know the real story. Also, as far as missing episodes -- although I don't know anything about this, it's not outside the realm of possibility given that the property was in the hands of different companies.

Is there actual documentation of how many of these were originally made and aired, and what was (or wasn't) in the shows?

 

[Mark Y]

How many shows the Internet declared "lost" 20 years ago have been found since then?

"Lost" doesn't always mean lost. I have seen "lost media" kinds of sites which list all kinds of stuff and often it turns out they're just talking about shows which haven't been shown recently, with no actual information about the status of existing material. It's confusing.

 

[MatthewA]

Yeah, it's idiotic to call 1980s/early 1990s Disney Channel shows "lost" just because they haven't been seen on TDC since they added commercials 20 years ago+ during that whole Zoog abomination. Disney's probably still got their Pooh, Dumbo, and Alice live-action shows still tucked away in the vaults just waiting to be digitized.

 

[Lord Dalek]

How many shows the Internet declared "lost" 20 years ago have been found since then?

The first four years of Joker's Wild, Gambit, and Spin-Off
A fairly sizable chunk of Hollywood Squares
Eleven episodes of Doctor Who
Two episodes of Password from 1972
The Doctors
Concentration
Super Bowl I

I'm sure there's tons more.

 

[Jack P]

No one ever declared the Jack Narz "Concentration" lost. From the beginning everyone understood that NBC wouldn't grant permission to let the episodes air since they controlled the format.

 

[DeWilson]

"Lost" doesn't always mean lost. I have seen "lost media" kinds of sites which list all kinds of stuff and often it turns out they're just talking about shows which haven't been shown recently, with no actual information about the status of existing material. It's confusing.

Yes, agreed.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

The first four years of Joker's Wild, Gambit, and Spin-Off
A fairly sizable chunk of Hollywood Squares
Eleven episodes of Doctor Who
Two episodes of Password from 1972
The Doctors
Concentration
Super Bowl I

I'm sure there's tons more.

A few episodes of Till Death Us Do Part came back during the internet age (one came back after the big DVD set was released and was included as a bonus feature on the blu-ray of the theatrical film)

Not complete episodes, but the end-of-episode 'morals' for Shazam! were discovered in Warner's vaults when they went to the original elements to scan the series in HD (a few years after they released the DVDs), and are now included on the blu-ray set.

I think one or two of the B/W Dad's Army episodes came back in 2001.

Three episodes from the first series of Morecombe and Wise were recovered in 2012 and 2018.

As you say, i'm sure there are more.

 

[Albert71292]

I think one or two of the B/W Dad's Army episodes came back in 2001.

One of the missing B/W "Dad's Army" episodes, audio was discovered, so they made a B/W animated version using the original audio. That episode is on Britbox.

 

[Lord Dalek]

I don't consider audio recordings as episode recoveries. If they were, there would be no missing episodes of Doctor Who as complete audio recordings exist of every single one.

 

[ClassicTVMan1981X]

I really hope the following Hanna-Barbera cartoons have not been destroyed lately...
These Are the Days (1974)
The (New) Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape Show (1975)
The Mumbly Cartoon Show (1976)
Dynomutt, Dog Wonder (1976-77) (episodes 17-20)
CB Bears (1977)
Skatebirds (1977)
Yogi's Space Race (1978)
Galaxy Goof-Ups (1978)
Buford and the Galloping Ghost (1978)
Jana of the Jungle (1978)
The New Fred and Barney Show (1979)
The New Shmoo (1979)

If that was the case, we Hanna-Barbera fans will all be feeling delusional.

~Ben

 

[Lord Dalek]

Well now that Bezos has bought MGM, maybe he'll be nice enough to sell the Heatter-Quigley archives (which are still not properly cataloged AFAIK) to some company that actually cares.

 

[bmasters9]

Well now that Bezos has bought MGM, maybe he'll be nice enough to sell the Heatter-Quigley archives (which are still not properly cataloged AFAIK) to some company that actually cares.

I take it that means also the stuff that's from Merrill Heatter alone (All-Star Blitz, Battlestars and others).

 

[Lord Dalek]

I take it that means also the stuff that's from Merrill Heatter alone (All-Star Blitz, Battlestars and others).

Yes all the game show holdings from Filmways and its successor Orion.

 

[timk1041]

There may be one episode and some segments that still exist on the original black and white 2-inch tapes but the rest are all kinescopes.

I have the complete collection. Decent picture and audio for the most part. Most have the original commercials.

 

[timk1041]

Heard or read, that most of Captain Kangaroo is gone. I could be wrong.

Sad.

 

[timk1041]

Neil Brock mentioned the show "Karen" in another thread a while back. It starred Debbie Watson the year before she was in "Tammy". It was on for 1 season in 1964-65 on NBC. I understand only a couple episodes exist out of the 27 that were made. The Beach Boys sang the title song. I have seen clips of the show online. Unfortunately the entire show isn't around anymore. It seems similar to The Patty Duke Show and looks like fun to watch.

 

[LouA]

Life Of Riley! It was a popular show distributed by 20th Century Fox back in the late fifties and beyond. All of the elements exist, but it was neglected in recent years by Fox and is now owned by Disney, so it may as well be totally lost.